Research in Rhetoric: A Glance at our Recent Past, Present, and Potential Future

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to cite theorists and articles that have marked significant directions in rhetorical scholarship. This essay treats rhetoric writ large without making clear distinctions between rhetorical criticism, argumentative theory, or focus on rhetorical setting. It seeks to recall our history, our rhetorical scholarly history. A key reason for this review is that a failure to recall our history—to keep our past close to us—may well result in either repeating errors or in failing to give credit where it is due. We are, all of us, “always already interpellated” (Althusser, 1971, p. 164) into a scholarly conversation that is not always of our own making, recognizing that conversation—and exploring its roots—is an ongoing obligation.

Keywords:

• Rhetorical scholarship
• rhetorical criticism
• scholarly history

The Enlarged Scope of Rhetoric

In 1972, Douglas Ehninger published an anthology that serves well as our starting point. His introductory essay in Contemporary Rhetoric cited trends as follows: “the enlarged scope of rhetoric”; “the pluralistic view of rhetoric”; “the reconsideration of rhetoric's purposes”; “the union of rhetoric and philosophy”; “the rapprochement of rhetoric and literary criticism”; “the impact of behavioral studies upon rhetoric”; and “the new rhetoric.” It may be instructive to note that his list of trends appeared about five years after Bitzer's (1968) “The Rhetorical Situation” was published in the first issue of a then new journal, Philosophy and Rhetoric. Bitzer's essay, along with Ed Black's (1965) Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method, forever altered the scholarly landscape. Prior to that time, a major focus of criticism was grounded in Aristotelian categories. I should know, as my M.A. thesis was written in a style complicit with the standard approach! If Black gave us a reason to move beyond Aristotle in understanding the role of historical context in the analysis of rhetorical artifacts, Bitzer gave us a new vocabulary. While the specific rationale Bitzer offered has not always been adhered to or accepted (Richard Vatz's [1973] critique is important to recall), to say that the essay has been highly influential would be an understatement. We are forever indebted to a sense of rhetoric's relation to context as a result of that seminal piece.

Herbert Simons (1970) moved the discursive analysis of social movements beyond Aristotle as well with his essay, “Requirements, Problems, and Strategies: A Theory of Persuasion for Social Movements.” In the process, he moved our gaze toward the role of sociological theory in exploring rhetorical events, as well as initiated a scholarly trend in both theorizing and critiquing movements from various perspectives. In addition, it is important to note that Simons' piece was published during the Vietnam War—a time when non-negotiable demands did not exactly conform to an Aristotelian analysis that privileged reasoned deliberation.

In 1973, Donald C. Bryant (whose now classic definition of rhetoric—the “rationale of informative and suasory discourse” [1972, p. 18; emphasis in original]—appeared in 1953) published a collection of essays entitled Rhetorical Dimensions in Criticism. A primary move in this work was consistent with the earlier National Developmental Project on Rhetoric, which had concluded that rhetoric's scope should be broadened beyond oral or printed speech (Bitzer & Black, 1971). Bryant's title argued for an approach to rhetoric that recognized non-oratorical forms may have rhetorical dimensions. Thus began the loosening of what had been rather rigid boundaries on what scholars should focus on or call rhetorical. What we now reference as visual rhetoric has its roots in these earlier developments. Another essay, published in Quarterly Journal of Speech in 1973, has been recognized as the beginnings of a focus on feminist issues within rhetorical studies—Karlyn Kohrs Campbell's “The Rhetoric of Women's Liberation: An Oxymoron.” I'll come back to this theme at a later point, but it is worth noting for now. The civil rights movement also was alive and well in the late 60s—and rhetorical critiques, mostly by white authors, other than Arthur Smith (now better known as Molefi Asante) were part of the scholarly landscape of the period. As implied, we were not, as a field, highly diverse in those days; one might argue that we are still not, but at least there has been some progress.

Before I leave this period, I want to highlight some work that similarly altered rhetorical history and theory. Prior to the Southern Illinois University Press publishing new editions of George Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric and Richard Whately's Elements of Rhetoric in 1963 (edited and introduced by Bitzer and Ehninger respectively), Ehninger had already published several articles revising the standard interpretation of modern rhetoric as dependent on classical sources. Ehninger's (1963) essay, “Campbell, Blair, and Whately Revisited,” summarized his position, arguing that Campbell, Blair, and Whately were far more cognizant of, and influenced by, contemporary philosophical theories than had previously been recognized. For his part, Bitzer augmented the case, noting Hume's influence on Campbell's ideas. I have a personal stake in these arguments, as a few years later, in a convention paper, perhaps ill-advisedly titled, “Old Myths and New Realities,” I buttressed their arguments with my own analysis, including an attack on Wilbur Samuel Howell's interpretive process in his 1971 Eighteenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric. Howell was present that day. To say he took umbrage at my remarks was an understatement, as he revealed when I met him later in the coffee shop. It isn't often you get called a “young whippersnapper” by your elders. I still think I was right then—perhaps I have retained something of Richard Whately's spirit after all. Another advance within this arena was captured in Ehninger's (1968) own “On Systems of Rhetoric.” In this essay, he formalized the distinctions he had been working on in the prior decade in recognizing that rhetoric was not a singular subject. Instead, it responded to the needs of its age, and altered its emphasis and configuration to meet that age. Thus modern rhetoric was typified as “armchair psychology”—“a product of the study rather than of the forum” (1972, p. 53). Contemporary rhetoric was styled as social with an attendant focus on the manner in which language functions, in Burke's (1950/1969) terms, as symbolic inducement.1 While more recent moves in rhetorical theorizing have altered the landscape, I think it is fair to say that the concern with language remains central to much of current and, quite likely, future scholarship.

In 1967, Robert L. Scott published “On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic.” This small essay, published in a regional journal, was to create a whirlwind of new activity in rhetorical scholarship. While we had long labored under Plato's disparagement of rhetoric as a knack that “made the worse reason appear the better” (Whedbee, 2008, p. 618), Scott's essay allowed scholars to move forward with renewed energy and confidence in their ability to claim for rhetoric something other than Weaver's (1953/1995) sense of its dependence on first finding the truth, and then casting that into language acceptable in a world of “prudential conduct” (Weaver, p. 28). Rhetoric was no longer the stepchild of philosophy, but rather a unique entity with its own internal power to create knowledge. We remain the beneficiaries of that initial essay.

Before leaving this period of our history, and I have no doubt missed pieces you would recall as equally noteworthy if not more so, there is one additional work that deserves mention: Wander and Jenkins's (1972) “Rhetoric, Society, and the Critical Response.” While later essays, to be noted in due course, mark a turn in critical scholarship, I would return to this piece as the opening salvo in recognizing the role of the critic's conscience in formulating a response to moral crises. A caution, lest I be misunderstood: in denoting the first, I am always open to the criticism that prior scholarship contains elements of the same claims—a point that, ironically, I am in the process of making in this review. My goal is not to suggest that no one prior to whomever is named did not think similar things; rather, my goal is to highlight works that have articulated a new attitude or orientation in a way that resonates with current scholarship and advances ideas in a creative, heuristic manner.

The New Rhetoric

At this time, we also discovered Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's (1969) The New Rhetoric. Ray Dearin's (1969) essay, “The Philosophical Basis of Chaim Perelman's Theory of Rhetoric,” and James Crosswhite's (1969) “Universality in Rhetoric: Perelman's Universal Audience” are two works that oriented the discipline to this new analysis of matters rhetorical. Needless to say, scholars with an interest in argumentation, rhetoric, and criticism were drawn to this work like moths to a flame. The “universal audience” entered the vocabulary of the day, as did the types of argument that were chronicled in that work. It should be noted that Perelman came to rhetoric to solve other philosophical problems related to the role of determining what constitutes justice, among other concepts. Finding an American audience for his work was likely not on his agenda. While by no means the last word on the influence of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (the field has not always included his co-author's role in the collective judgment of his work), James Golden and Joe Pilotta's edited collection of essays in 1986, Practical Reasoning in Human Affairs: Studies in Honor of Chaim Perelman, serves as one convenient source for extant scholarship on the nature and scope of the new rhetoric's relation to contemporary theory.

The 1970s also witnessed a new orientation in rhetorical theory and criticism at the hands of Michael Calvin McGee. One could write an entire essay about many of the scholars noted in this review, and McGee is no exception. His 1975 “In Search of ‘The People’: A Rhetorical Alternative” sets forth an explanation of how discursive strategies function in creating “a people” that, in turn, recognizes in a leader a rhetoric that promotes their own sense of being in the world. One might argue that his 1978 essay, “The ‘Ideograph’: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology,” is a piece on a par with Bitzer's “rhetorical situation” in altering the trajectory of rhetorical scholarship. What McGee provides, in this essay, is a critical term—“ideograph”—that functions as a symbolic expression denoting the power of words in orienting world views. Weaver's (1953/1995) “god” and “devil” terms and Burke's (1964) “terms for order” are prior conceptions that are eclipsed in this analysis, at least in the scholarly imagination, for the key point is not simply that language has power but that it gives expression to ideological commitments that are contained within key terms, such as liberty or freedom.2 As he suggests in that essay:

An analysis of ideographic usages in political rhetoric, I believe, reveals interpenetrating systems or “structures” of public motives. Such structures appear to be “diachronic” and “synchronic” patterns of political consciousness which have the capacity both to control “power” and to influence (if not determine) the shape and texture of each individual's “reality.” (p. 5)

The move toward ideological critique was given further acknowledgement in Wander's (1983) “The Ideological Turn in Modern Criticism.” This essay served two purposes: it recognized prior work in rhetorical criticism and provided a clear argument for the role of an ideological perspective. If one could say that the “Special Report: Rhetorical Criticism: The State of the Art” (1980) contained essays that reflected a traditional approach to criticism, the argument advanced by Wander changes the terms under which a critic operates. As Leff (1980) writes in that special issue: “The emic approach adopts the paradigm of interpretative theory. Its goal is explanation, and therefore the emic stance begins and ends with the particular object of study” (p. 348). Contrary-wise, Wander observes:

Criticism takes an ideological turn when it recognizes the existence of powerful vested interests benefiting from and consistently urging policies and technology that threaten life on this planet, when it realizes that we search for alternatives. … More than “informed talk about matters of importance” criticism carries us to the point of recognizing good reasons and engaging in right action. (p. 18)

Putting these two in opposition is not to suggest that one is right and the other wrong. Rather, it is to profile the vast difference in orientations that critics may take toward their own work.

I would be remiss in chronicling this period without referencing the work of Thomas Farrell (1976), whose essay, “Knowledge, Consensus, and Rhetorical Theory,” served to advance a sense of rhetoric as intimately connected to the construction of social knowledge. An additional essay with Thomas Frentz, “Language-action: A Paradigm for Communication,” the same year furthered an analysis that crystallized an orientation toward rhetoric that privileged its role in the constitution of reality.

The early 1980s also saw another dimension added to the rhetorical lexicon—a focus on narrative. Walter R. Fisher's (1984) “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument” and his later text in 1987 advanced a sense of rhetoric as storied. Soon to eclipse Bormann's (1972) work on “fantasy themes” and “rhetorical visions” in the lexicon, Fisher's sense of “homo narrans” as a master metaphor encompassing human symbolic expression created another trajectory. To say it was met with universal acceptance would be an untrue claim—several scholars, such as Warnick (1987), took exception either to the treatment of narrative or to the sense in which it might either replace or stand alongside what Fisher referred to as the “rational world paradigm.” While I think it correct that he neither meant for the two to be in opposition nor for one to supersede the other, the formulation appeared to give precedence to the role of narrative. The value of his orientation lies less in judgments of rightness or wrongness and more in the influence it has had in shifting rhetorical theory and criticism in a new direction.

Social Movement Theory

Rhetoric was alive and well (or at least talked about) within social movement theory in the early 1980s. A 1980 issue of the Central States Speech Journal featured 10 essays by such scholars as Griffin, McGee, Zarefskey, Lucas, Cathcart, Andrews, Simons, and others (interestingly, Carol Jablonski was the only female included). Keep in mind that one of the key social movements of the prior era was none other than civil rights. This was still a white world in terms of those included. Each offered their own perspective on the nature and scope of what should be covered/analyzed or otherwise theorized in relation to the analysis of social movements. This was followed three years later in the same journal with a smaller colloquium—with some of the same contributors—that extended the discussion. Controversy over definition—what constitutes a social movement, and what is the role of rhetoric in its constitution—would be one way to describe the discussion. That is overly simple, of course, but it stands as one of the last gasps of what now appears to be a vanishing trajectory—at least in terms of conceptual advances. We appear to have moved away from the language of this era, while at the same time analyzing what then would have been called social movements, without invoking the theoretical lens of that period. That may, in fact, be all to the good (and I realize I am likely overstating the case on both sides here).

Another new discovery of note was the integration of Jürgen Habermas's work into our everyday vocabulary. An initial 1979 essay by Brant Burleson and Susan Kline provided a summary overview of the role Habermas might play in matters rhetorical: “Habermas' Theory of Communication: A Critical Explication.” Even more so than with Toulmin or Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, Habermas's orientation toward communicative action caught the imagination of scholars across a wide diversity of disciplines. A Google Scholar search using “Habermasian rhetoric” today gets a little over 20,000 hits. Although by no means the only influence, there is one that strikes me as particularly noteworthy: Habermas provided an opening for considering the “public sphere”—in all its manifestations—as a new key term underlying rhetorical theory and analysis. For example, Thomas Goodnight's (1982) “The Personal, Technical and Public Spheres of Argument: A Speculative Inquiry into the Art of Public Deliberation,” and his 1987 “Public Discourse” essay provide a clear introduction to the central issues involved. The latter essay is part of a special section of Critical Studies in Mass Communication (Jasinski, 1987). Bitzer, McGee, Goodnight, and Hauser offer different perspectives on the nature of the public and its potential relationship to rhetoric. While I won't go into detail here, suffice it to say that these remain worthy of examination—whether you agree or disagree with their respective differences, you will find later work on the public sphere emerges with greater clarity and precision.

As the 1980s wound to a close, another essay disrupted the flow of scholarship—hopefully in a positive direction. In 1989, heavily influenced by prior work by McGee and others, I published an essay entitled “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis.” I may not be overreaching its importance in comparing its reception and eventual influence to Bitzer's “Rhetorical Situation” two decades earlier. While I am much more comfortable with others talking about this piece and what it means (and I am forever finding out new meanings), I will take this opportunity to talk a bit about its crafting. The initial impetus was reading Foucault's The Order of Things (1970) and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) in the late 1970s and then presenting an essay on ideology at the University of Iowa in 1981. The next impetus came as a request to write a review essay for QJS. That piece, published in 1983—“Marxism and the Rhetorical Conception of Ideology”—was instrumental in furthering my introduction to a whole new world. The first reference to “Critical Rhetoric” came in 1984 in a short paper for SCA (now NCA) in Chicago. The praxis portion was written as a separate paper for an Eastern Communication Association convention in 1987. What this may suggest, and there are many scholars who appreciate the sentiment, is that ideas take time to develop. Sometimes you hit and other times you miss. As I struggled with various drafts, it occurred to me to put what was a heavily theoretical exploration of domination and freedom together with the principles of praxis. That worked. What I have learned since then is that one's own work is never truly one's own—multiple interpretations, criticisms, extensions, and alterations have occurred since that time. As I have said in public settings, I was part of a conversation that was ongoing at the time, and my role as a theorist was that of putting a frame around things that were already being said in separate and discrete ways.

Rhetoric and Fragmentation

One essay that was in the same spirit as this work was McGee's (1990) essay, “Text, Context and the Fragmentation of Contemporary Culture.” Capturing the sense of fragmentation was, in my judgment, consistent with McGee's genius as a theorist and critic. If your purpose is to gain an understanding of the emergence of critical/cultural studies, work such as this becomes essential reading. As an aside, publishing work that becomes influential is not restricted to the major journals. Operating in what might be—to use a sports term—a mid-major market, such as publishing in a regional journal, does not necessarily mean a work will have less influence. Promotion and tenure documents that automatically assign less value (such as fewer points earned) to such work may well seriously misjudge the value of a scholar's contribution to the discipline.

Work in the 1990s is equally richly textured and reveals a number of major trajectories. While there is also work in feminist rhetoric within composition studies that merits our attention, such as Andrea Lunsford's (1995) edited collection, Reclaiming Rhetorica, work by scholars within our discipline is critical for an understanding of changes in scholarly directions. At the end of the 1980s, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell published her two-volume collection of major speeches by women: Man Cannot Speak for Her: A Critical Study of Feminist Rhetoric. This was a major undertaking that assisted in advancing our knowledge of women's discourse. You might imagine her chagrin at reading the following lines in Barbara Biesecker's (1992) essay, “Coming to Terms with Recent Attempts to Write Women into the History of Rhetoric”: “As feminists, we cannot want to be on the side of Campbell's revisionist history” (p. 141). Adding items to a rhetorical canon that has been determined by male standards does nothing to alter the canon itself. While the argument is more complex than this, the subsequent exchange between Campbell ([1993] “Biesecker Cannot Speak for Her Either”) and Biesecker's (1993) response an issue later is valuable in its own right in exploring the necessity of “writing women into history,” while retaining a healthy skepticism toward the outcome of that effort—what it misses in altering the standards used to determine what gets recognized as part of the canon and what does not. Citing Biesecker's response to Campbell's understandably defensive position may be helpful in sorting out the issues:

On the one hand, I argue that we cannot not follow Campbell's lead, that we must remain firmly committed not only to recovering women's rhetorics, but also to struggling for their integration into the canon. On the other hand, I suggest it is also vital that we persistently critique our own practices of inclusion and exclusion, that we vigilantly attend to the criteria against which any particular rhetorical discourse is assessed in order to grant or deny it a place in the canon, so as to make visible to ourselves the unacknowledged masculinist agenda to which those practices have (un)wittingly contributed. (pp. 236–237)

What Biesecker ultimately reminds us is that scholarly work has consequences—it is not for nothing that we take a critical perspective on the outcome of our work.

This is more clearly demonstrated in a work that reminds us of the gatekeeping that occurs within our journals, as well as within our professional associations. Blair, Brown, and Baxter's (1995) essay, “Disciplining the Feminine,” stands out as a bittersweet commentary on our lives as scholars. In one sense, there should have been no reason for this essay, at least not in its final configuration. One would have thought by the mid-90s we were beyond the petty nonsense that occasioned a sharply written response to being denied a voice in the academy. In another sense, there was every reason for its being published. What that essay reminds us is quite simple: who reads what is written—who passes judgment on what gets heard—matters. While there are several essays that chronicle the status of research on women (Dow & Condit, 2005; Foss & Foss, 1983; Meyer, 2007; Spitzack & Carter, 1987), this is a singular piece that merits being implanted in our collective memory.

A new development in the 1990s, an outgrowth of an emerging sense of critical/cultural perspectives, is highlighted in Nakayama and Krizek's (1995) “Whiteness as a Strategic Rhetoric.” This work initiated a much-needed reexamination of how privilege operates within a society, and the role of communication in maintaining that status in ways that are unacknowledged by, or even unknown to, those perpetuating their privilege. The 1999 volume, edited by Nakayama and Martin—Whiteness: The Communication of Social Identity—furthers this critical work.

Rhetoric and Critical Studies

The field of rhetoric was predominantly white and male. It still is, though there are positive signs of change on the horizon. One manifestation of that alteration is the growth in work traveling under the broad sobriquet of critical/cultural studies. The emergence of a division devoted to this work, and the creation of a new journal, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, in 2004 are quiet testimonials to the ever-changing nature of our scholarly inquiries. As one who has consistently argued against artificial barriers to the emergence of new scholarship (such as a moratorium on the creation of new NCA research-oriented units), these changes reflect a growing maturation and sophistication within the discipline. Scholarship in African-American rhetoric has long been represented in our field; the growth in the number of African-American scholars doing work in every venue within the discipline is a new and welcome development. Within the contours of this review, I would note the following: Richardson and Jackson's (2003) edited text, Understanding African American Rhetoric: Classical Origins to Contemporary Innovations; Jackson and Elaine B. Richardson's (2004) edited text, African American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives; and the just published text by Deborah Atwater (2009), African American Women's Rhetoric: The Search for Dignity, Personhood, and Honor (Race, Rites, and Rhetoric, Colors, Cultures, and Communication). These are just a few of the signs one could mention that suggest that our field is becoming more diverse, and that research into matters of race, class, and gender identity is moving forward. This does not mean, by any stretch, that we have arrived and should be satisfied—it simply means there is positive movement in the right direction. In changing direction to look toward the future, I want to underscore the fact that this has been a highly personalized account. I realize that I have overlooked major trends, such as the growing interest in visual rhetoric (recently given a similar historical review by Lester Olson, 2008), or an interest in spatial dimensions of rhetoric (see the Western Journal of Communication special issue on Spaces, 1999), or a reworking of the relationship between rhetoric and history (Blair & Kahl, 1990; Turner, 1998). The emergence of work dedicated to social activism (e.g., Frey, 1998; Swartz, 2005) is also noteworthy. Time and space do not permit further exploration of these and other new directions in scholarship if I am to manage a cursory account of where we are headed.

Indicators of Rhetorical Health

It should be clear that I believe rhetorical scholarship is alive and well. The emergence of an Alliance of Rhetorical Societies is one such indicator of health. The sophisticated work of our current doctoral students and new assistant professors also bodes well for our future. I implied at the outset that I could not have predicted my own research trajectory from intellectual history to argumentation theory to contemporary approaches to critical/cultural studies. Nor would I have predicted a growing interest in, and involvement with, feminist rhetoric. Thus any predictions I offer here are potentially groundless. That said—here is a list of my top 10—in no special order of importance.

1. Within rhetorical history, research will continue to alter the previously largely white, Western, male perspective (see Royster, 2003).

2. Within rhetorical theory, writ large, research will move forward with a conceptualization of rhetoric that moves beyond the strictures of a tradition that privileges Western ways of communicating ideas (see McKerrow, 1998).

3. The concern over how decisions are made, via public deliberation, will become even more pronounced, especially in the context of challenging those deliberative theories that see rhetoric's province as damaging the prospects for reasoned discourse (see Hauser & Grim, 2004).

4. Reinterpretations, revisions of existing history, theory, and criticism will continue to drive the rationale for an essay's reason for being.

5. Lines of demarcation between areas, such as rhetoric and media studies, already blurred, will become less visible. In the process, an integration of formerly discrete fields of study will allow more creative and innovative work.

6. Postmodern influences, however one defines that much-maligned term, will continue to foster new questions; the modernist tradition will not fall away as a consequence—we are in no danger of losing a traditional focus, for example, on what we call public address. What we are in danger of doing, instead, is stalling the progress of new questions being asked and answered in new ways, as they are not reflective of how scholarship is done.

7. The emergence of a journal devoted to communication and rhetorical scholarship focusing on gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgendered issues will further legitimize this arena. One can always hope.

8. The intellectual work of the discipline will continue to be facilitated and fostered by smaller, specialized conferences, such as the biannual Alta Conference on argumentation. This does not serve to negate the value of larger conventions (e.g., NCA, ICA); it does suggest these organizations exist for different purposes.

9. Rhetorical scholarship focusing on the limits and uses of electronic communication will continue to grow (see Warnick, 2007).

10. The field writ large, and rhetorical studies in particular, will continue to derive sustenance from theoretical and practical work from outside the discipline—what directions this will take, and which scholars will come to the forefront is anybody's guess. New work on a scholar much influenced by Foucault, Agamben, for example, may be one such influence; Badiou is emerging already with more influence than felt previously; Levinas's influence will continue to grow as more scholars become acquainted with his work. Suffice it to say that what our graduate students are now reading is not what we read when we were young—and their scholarship will reflect their intellectual engagement with new ideas.

A final comment is in order before bringing this review to a close.3 There are tensions implied in the foregoing chronicle that impact the choices we make as teacher/scholars. One tension is over the nature of scholarship. One might recall the sometimes fractious disagreement between humanist and social science approaches to scholarly inquiry that pervaded the field as I entered it some 40 years ago. The history as influence debate over the extent to which modern rhetorical theories remained termed properly “classical” is another instance where tension over “what is the best interpretation” existed. This same tension was repeated in the contest over text versus context—wherein the role of ideological critique, and the insertion of judgments about what should have been said or done, marked so-called proper scholarship. The tension between writing women into the canon of rhetorical history and remaking the canon is another example of disagreements over scholarly directions. As we advise new scholars, which direction should we implore them to take? While my own view may well be in the minority, I think the best answer to these tensions is this: be well aware of the consequences of the choices we make, but be driven first by the question, “What approach or direction will best serve in answering the questions I am asking?” It is just as important to remember the classical influences on modern theory as it is to revise judgments about its extent. It is just as critical to recover silenced voices as it is to alter the landscape in which they are placed. If this means taking a proactive stance toward social advocacy, so be it. If it means taking a more traditional public address perspective on a discourse, so be it. Denigrating one approach to highlight the value of another is a waste of time. Our needs as a field of study are not going to be fulfilled by a reductive approach to scholarship. Current doctoral students are incorporating personal narratives in their examination of rhetorical artifacts—this certainly is not how I was taught to undertake scholarly writing, but what of it? Embracing change is far more exciting than resisting it. The richness of the field deserves recollection—the continual rhetorical interplay of rhetorical theory in history and demands emergent from the historical moment of investigation and inquiry.

Acknowledgements

He thanks Jeffrey St. John (University of Maine), Jeffrey Kurtz (Denison University), James Klumpp (University of Maryland), and the participants at the Hope Conference for their assistance in revising this essay. A previous version of this essay was presented at the Hope Conference, Randolph Macon College, July 2009.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raymie E. McKerrow

Raymie E. McKerrow (Ph.D., University of Iowa, 1974) is Charles E. Zumkehr Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Ohio University

Notes

1. James Klumpp (University of Maryland) reminds me that Burke's influence arguably underlies a great deal of what Ehninger and others were thinking and writing about in the late 60s–early 70s. That indebtedness is presumed rather than explicit in this discussion.

2. Jeffrey St. John (University of Maine) reminds me that Weaver's perspective has more to offer the ideological turn than we've perhaps acknowledged. His conservatism may have dampened our enthusiasm for what is, otherwise, a valuable perspective on the role of discourse in society.

3. I am indebted to Jeffrey Kurtz (Denison University) for the suggestion to engage this final issue.